Prescription drug abuse is the leading form of narcotic drug abuse in the US. Heroin has been replaced with prescription grade synthetic narcotics. Approximately 3% of 12 year old children in the US admit to using Vicodin in the previous year, while about 15% of 18-25 year old men and women admit to the same. It is estimated that approximately 15 million people in the US abuse prescription drugs. Emergency Departments have seen a 111% increase in the number of visits from people who are seeking narcotics for their addiction. Prescription drug abuse is the number one drug abuse problem in the US.
Healthcare entities have to deal with this problem every day (pharmacists, hospitals, providers), as do law enforcement officials and educators. One of the tools physicians, physician assistants, pharmacists, and law enforcement can use is a state based Prescription Monitoring Program, or PMP. One such example is available at ohioPMP.org. All 50 states now have, or are developing, these programs and they are usually funded at the Federal level. These programs require that pharmacists and providers who dispense medications directly report every narcotic distribution to the state PMP. The state PMP maintains a database of these “transactions.” Approved providers can log into the state PMP website and retrieve a patient's narcotic use information in PDF format. This document may be 1-10 pages long and annotates very specific details about prescription usage (who, where, when, what, how much, when written, when filled, new or refill, etc.). Presumably, a prescriber, such as a physician or physician's assistant, would utilize this site whenever they were concerned about the potential for prescription drug abuse. However, prescribers use this service at a relatively low rate because it is a somewhat arduous process to navigate to the site, login, enter demographic data, wait for the report search, download the PDF and then read all of the data. Ohio reports that only 17% of prescribers in the state have even applied for access to the PMP and fewer than that use the system regularly.